The Storm King: A Novel

by Brendan Duffy

Overview

“Deeply atmospheric, breathlessly suspenseful, with a ticking clock like no other—a terrific thriller.”—Lee Child

Haunted by dark secrets and an unsolved mystery, a young doctor returns to his isolated Adirondacks hometown in a tense, gripping novel in the vein of Michael Koryta and Harlan Coben.

Burying the past only gives it strength—and fury.

Nate McHale has assembled the kind of life most people would envy. After a tumultuous youth marked by his inexplicable survival of a devastating tragedy, Nate left his Adirondack hometown of Greystone Lake and never looked back.  Fourteen years later, he’s become a respected New York City surgeon, devoted husband, and loving father. 
        
Then a body is discovered deep in the forests that surround Greystone Lake.
       
This disturbing news finally draws Nate home. While navigating a tense landscape of secrets and suspicion, resentments and guilt, Nate reconnects with estranged friends and old enemies, and encounters strangers who seem to know impossible things about him. Haunting every moment is the Lake’s  sinister history and the memory of wild, beautiful Lucy Bennett, with whom Nate is forever linked by shattering loss and youthful passion. 
     
As a massive hurricane bears down on the Northeast, the air becomes electric, the clouds grow dark, and escalating acts of violence echo events from Nate’s own past. Without a doubt, a reckoning is coming—one that will lay bare the lies that lifelong friends have told themselves and unleash a vengeance that may consume them all.

Praise for The Storm King

“Brendan Duffy’s second book mingles horror, historical fiction, supernatural suspense and old-fashioned murder mystery, the rare phantasmagoria whose pieces click into a satisfying resolution. . . . This is a gutsy, intricate, evocative piece of mischief, much closer than anyone usually gets to that particular spell cast by Stephen King.”—USA Today

“Duffy follows his debut, House of Echoes, with a stunning literary thriller, which combines accomplished wordsmithing with startling twists.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An elaborately layered, creepily atmospheric story that blends haunting legends and the psychological terror of a murderer on the hunt. A winning thriller sure to draw readers of Jennifer McMahon, Ruth Ware, and Michael Koryta.”—Booklist (starred review)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804178150
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/06/2018
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	365,224
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Brendan Duffy is an editor and the author of House of Echoes. He lives in New York.

Read an Excerpt

The Boy Who Fell

I

For Nate, Saturdays in the spring means baseball.

His teammates think playing the outfield is ignominious, but he likes it. There’s a meditative appeal to a morning spent watching for hard-­struck balls as they spin and slow at the height of their parabolas.

He’s not the most attentive of fielders, but Nate does all right at the plate. He’s third on Greystone Lake’s junior varsity team in RBIs, and when he takes warm-­up swings the shouts from the bleachers are authentic.

His mother, father, and brother are among those cheering this last Saturday in April. It’s just a scrimmage against North Hampstead, so Mom’s attendance is unusual. She goes to the real games, but most weekends find her up with the sun and working in her vegetable garden. Nate’s little brother, Gabe, would play in the grass as Mom fussed over her plants. Neither of them are in the garden today, because Mom strained her back, and her seedlings can survive a few days without weeding. Gabe doesn’t mind, because he likes baseball. For some time, he’s been counting the days until he graduates from T-­ball. Dad doesn’t make it to all of Nate’s games, either, but this is the kind of day that makes every cell in your body sing, and he can read the Times during lulls in the action as easily as he could at their kitchen table.

Nate’s team wins thanks to a triple he hits in the ninth inning. Though the matchup isn’t an important one, there are whoops and smiles all around. His coach gives Nate the game ball, and Nate feels proud that his family was there to watch him play well and win.

Mom calls him her baseball hero. What type of pie would her baseball hero like for dessert tonight? she wants to know. There’s an organic market at the Wharf, and she’ll make any kind he wants. She asks to see Nate’s game ball, and that makes him feel proud, too.

His team plays on one of the high school’s fields, near the center of Greystone Lake, and it’s just a few minutes’ drive from there to the Wharf in Dad’s old black Passat. The Wharf itself is only a few minutes from the McHales’ home on Great Heron Drive. The town along the shore is not a large one.

It’s early in the year for tourists, but there’s still a good crowd at the market. Visitors browse for honey, jams, and baked goods while the locals from the Lake and nearby towns buy produce trucked from afar and fish fresh from their home waters. The sky being bell clear and the breeze warm, Dad suggests they picnic in the headlands. This isn’t something they do often, but it’s an intoxicating day. The lake glitters in the sun, and from that height the town will look like a jewel set into the crown of mountains.

They buy baguettes, cured meats, cheeses, and sun-­brewed iced teas. Gabe wheedles himself a bottle of artisanal root beer. Vendors sell cherries from California and strawberries from Arizona, but Nate is drawn to the first of the season’s peaches from Florida. He touches them as carefully as he would an infant’s head. Mom buys a basket of the fruit.

The Passat’s trunk is full of baseball equipment and a pile of uncorrected papers from Dad’s AP U.S. history class, so Dad places the bags of food in the back with Nate and Gabe while Mom rides up front with the peaches on her lap. Nate’s game ball is still where she left it on her seat. To avoid sitting on it, she gently places the grass-­stained ball in the basket with the peaches.

This is important.

Nate realizes later that it had all been important.

The headlands rise along Greystone Lake’s western shore. Hiking paths are carved throughout the protected woodlands, with parking lots marking the major trailheads. Among the nooks of interest that dot the headlands, Nate’s parents favor a particular meadow. In the deep of the old-­growth forest, an open space slopes toward the water and offers an unmatched view of the lake and town.

To reach it, they drive beyond the great houses of the Strand, where the boulevard branches from the shore to the headlands. The road there climbs the hills in switchbacks above the lake; it’s closed during the winter months when its blind turns are too treacherous to be passable.

But this Saturday in April, winter is a distant memory. The wind carries ripe forest smells into the car, and waterfowl patrol the shore below them.

Nate is watching one such flock when the Passat swerves and he’s knocked hard against the window glass. He looks up to see a green Jeep with flashing lights looming beyond the windshield. His mother gasps, and the basket of peaches overturns in her lap. There’s another car now, a shiny SUV straddling the center line like an elephant walking a tightrope. Dad accelerates to get the Passat out of its path. A curve is just ahead.

Nate sees Dad stomp the brakes, but their speed does not change. He hears Mom scream his father’s name as she bends to pull at something at his feet. The peaches, Nate realizes. No, he thinks a moment later. The baseball. Dad cannot slow the car because it’s wedged under the brake. Mom tries to pull it away, but it will not budge while Dad presses all of his strength into the pedal.

Gabe reaches across the space between them to grab Nate’s hand. In the flurry of the moment, this surprises Nate as much as the knock against the window, because Gabe made it very clear on his last birthday, his sixth, that he expected everyone to stop treating him like a baby. Nate looks at his brother and sees that his mouth is wide open but no sound is coming from it.

He wants to tell Gabe not to worry, but then they’re through the guardrail. The bright sky that had filled the windshield darkens into the empty slate of the lake. No more than a few seconds have passed since Nate had his head rapped against the glass, but that life is already over. He realizes this when Mom turns to look at him.

He often tries to recall the look in her eyes. What does a mother try to convey to her child when they have moments to live? Fear or regret? Sadness or pity? When Nate summons her expression in that instant, he tries to find love. But the only thing on her face is horror. They fall too quickly for it to be anything else.

In the movies Nate has seen, events like this are shown in slow-­motion. This underscores the importance of the scene. In these fraught seconds, the slightest look and gesture is given momentous gravity. Consciousness extends as it senses the imminence of its conclusion.

But these moments don’t stretch for Nate. The Passat falls like the ton and a half of metal that it is. One moment they are weightless and his mother is looking at him, and then the windshield explodes and the lake takes them.

Nate comes back to himself on the rocks. There’s a tortured sound around him. A raw and gasping cry like a person torn in half. It echoes across the water and up the cliffs as if it cannot find a place to rest. His chest feels as if it’s crushed in the fist of a giant. To breathe is agony. He cannot feel his arm, and his baseball uniform is now more red than white. His first thought is that the lake’s glittering surface was a lie, because he is cold to his marrow. There’s a phantom memory of ice water locked in a vise around his throat.

His body is wracked with pain and seizing with chills. He wipes blood from his eyes and searches the stony water for his family, but they are gone.

Only then does he realize that the scream he hears is his own.

Editorial Reviews

09/01/2017
A devoted family man and pediatric cancer specialist, Nate McHale was once "the Storm King," a boiling-with-rage teenager leading friends on missions to punish anyone who's crossed them. Now a body has been discovered near their Adirondack town, and secrets from their past are coming out. Duffy's debut, House of Echoes, has been optioned for film.

Library Journal

Deeply atmospheric, breathlessly suspenseful, with a ticking clock like no other—a terrific thriller.”—Lee Child

“Brendan Duffy’s second book mingles horror, historical fiction, supernatural suspense and old-fashioned murder mystery, the rare phantasmagoria whose pieces click into a satisfying resolution. . . . This is a gutsy, intricate, evocative piece of mischief, much closer than anyone usually gets to that particular spell cast by Stephen King.”—USA Today

“Duffy follows his debut, House of Echoes, with a stunning literary thriller, which combines accomplished wordsmithing with startling twists.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An elaborately layered, creepily atmospheric story that blends haunting legends and the psychological terror of a murderer on the hunt. A winning thriller sure to draw readers of Jennifer McMahon, Ruth Ware, and Michael Koryta.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Brendan Duffy owes me several nights of sleep, because once I finished the first chapter of his novel, I couldn’t stop turning the pages until I’d read every last thrilling, unsettling, heartbreakingly lovely last one of them. Duffy’s novel is, on the surface, a gripping murder mystery—but beneath that lies a love story, a cautionary coming-of-age tale, and a devastating meditation on violence and loss. A whirlwind of intrigue, vengeance, and wild longing, The Storm King will sweep you off your feet and blow you away.”—Robin Wasserman, author of Girls on Fire

“Duffy’s sophomore offering again toes the line between thriller and horror in this tale that flips between coming-of-age and coming-home-again timelines. Smartly-drawn characters aren’t who they first seem, their layers revealed slowly like lightning illuminating a stormy night. The richly atmospheric setting crackles with tension between the hurricane bearing down and the past coming to light.”—RT Book Reviews
 
“A slow-burning mystery, a delectable piece of crime fiction, and a coming-of-age story—all wrapped into one neat and tidy novel . . . full of rich characters and insightful writing . . . highly recommended.”—The Suspense Is Thrilling Me
 
“A haunting, wonderfully written thriller.”—Criminal Element
 
“Duffy has written a mystery that unleashes a well of emotions—from thrills and chills to heartbreak and sorrow. This is one tale that most definitely will keep readers hooked until the very end.”—Suspense Magazine
 
“A powerful story . . . Former friends regroup when a secret kept for years comes to light, threatening the lives they have built. Brendan Duffy adds so many layers that those bare plot bones feel like an entirely new creature.”—The News & Observer

From the Publisher

Listeners, batten down the hatches! Literal and metaphorical storms rage through this riveting audiobook. When a body is found in the woods of Greystone Lake, Nate McHale returns to his hometown for the funeral—and for answers. But he’s barely off the bus before his tumultuous past catches up with him and his old high school friends. Narrator Jon Lindstrom’s clipped, precise delivery heightens the story’s noirish elements. From the harrowing opening passages to the last gut-churning twist, Lindstrom cultivates an almost oppressive sense of foreboding. His narration remains strong through the many narrative strands, characters of all ages, and even when reading from the diary of a teenage girl. It’s a versatile, pitch-perfect performance of an audiobook that thriller fans won’t want to miss. A.T.N. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2018 - AudioFile

Listeners, batten down the hatches! Literal and metaphorical storms rage through this riveting audiobook. When a body is found in the woods of Greystone Lake, Nate McHale returns to his hometown for the funeral—and for answers. But he’s barely off the bus before his tumultuous past catches up with him and his old high school friends. Narrator Jon Lindstrom’s clipped, precise delivery heightens the story’s noirish elements. From the harrowing opening passages to the last gut-churning twist, Lindstrom cultivates an almost oppressive sense of foreboding. His narration remains strong through the many narrative strands, characters of all ages, and even when reading from the diary of a teenage girl. It’s a versatile, pitch-perfect performance of an audiobook that thriller fans won’t want to miss. A.T.N. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2018 - AudioFile